What Is Cellular Immunotherapy? All You Need to Know

There are currently over 100 different types of cancers classified today. While it can be a daunting diagnosis, millions survive and live a full life past their initial diagnosis date. This is due in part to medical advancements and in-depth cancer research.

Thankfully, the 21st century provides a host of effective treatments for patients. In this article, we’ll briefly explore one such type of treatment: cellular immunotherapy.

Targeted Therapies

The three most well-known cancer therapy types are surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. These work a bit differently than cell-based immunotherapy.

Traditional forms of therapy like chemotherapy work to attack and kill cancerous cells. Because of this, rapidly dividing normal cells can also get caught in the line of fire.

Cellular immunotherapy is different in that it is a targeted therapy. In simple terms, targeted therapies block the growth of cancerous cells vis à vis the bodies’ immune system.

But what is cellular immunotherapy exactly?

Cellular Immunotherapy

Cellular immunotherapy is one of the more recent types of immunotherapy on the market. It is a critical form of therapy for those difficult-to-treat cancers. Cancers such as melanomas, lung, or prostate.

It works by rallying the patient’s own immune system to work harder, to then find and attack cancerous cells.

Types

There are a few different forms of cellular immunotherapy for cancer.

• Checkpoint inhibitors
• Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy
• Cytokines
• Immunomodulators

Each treatment takes on a different form in order to attack and kill the cancer cells.

For example, some immune systems have a harder time finding cancer cells. This is due to the fact that some cancer cells aren’t different enough from normal cells at the outset.

This would be one instance where checkpoint inhibitor drugs are used to ease off the brakes of the immune system so that the immune system can do its job at full force.

Specific Treatment

As mentioned previously, active cellular immunotherapy is a good form of therapy for those more aggressive cancers such as prostate.

One such treatment for those that fall under this umbrella is a therapy named Provenge. It uses the patients’ own immune system to target cancerous prostate cells specifically.

The immune cells collected and grown in a lab prior to a Provenge treatment are grown in the presence of a protein.

Cytokines, mentioned above, are small proteins that carry messages between cells. They are crucial in helping stimulate the immune cells in order to attack the cancer cells.

Provenge is an FDA-approved, personalized immunotherapy treatment for patients with advanced prostate cancer. The following page will allow you to learn more about Provenge treatment and if this form of immunotherapy is right for you.

Immunity Community

We hope this information on cellular immunotherapy has been helpful and you feel more informed going into your diagnosis or the diagnosis of a loved one.

A cancer diagnosis can be scary and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be with the help of modern medicine and cutting-edge treatments.

If you’d like any additional information to guide you on your journey, please check out our other articles from the health and education sections.